


If You Wait

by callista1159



Series: Trust in Time [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Camping, F/M, Infidelity, Off-World, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 19:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2321246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callista1159/pseuds/callista1159
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place in season eight, after the events of Affinity and leading up to Threads. My take on why Sam realises that she can't make a future with Pete, written on the premise that something like this had to have happened to shake her up before she calls off the engagement, and why Kerry gets such a strong vibe from the pair of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Wait

**Author's Note:**

> I obviously don't own anyone or anything to do with Stargate and in any case TPTB would never indulge in this kind of off-world whimsy. I don't even know that I would want to see Carter be weak like this on screen. But this has been buzzing around my head and I'm getting back into writing a little and, well, here it is in all its plotless glory.
> 
> The title's taken from London Grammar's 'If You Wait' on the album of the same name. It's the current soundtrack to my S/J musings. 
> 
> And can you give me everything,  
> Everything, everything  
> Cos I can’t give you anything  
> And if you wait, if you wait I will trust in time that we will meet again  
> If you wait  
> I will trust in time that we will meet again

Some days, he just doesn’t stop touching her.

A nudge at her shoulder, a touch to her arm. Last week, he put his hand to her elbow and grinned, fully, as he complimented her mission analysis. Yesterday, he laid his hand flat to the small of her back as she leaned over to set up the scope to catch the ascending second moon of ‘309 and he checked the line of sight. She thinks that he must know how she thrills at his touch, flushes with the slightest contact; she thinks he is deliberately goading her, but he won’t meet her eyes and she’s having trouble reading him. Daniel keeps giving her sideways glances like he is trying to signal something but she’s wound so tight that she has no capacity for anyone else.

After the years of careful avoidance, their precise non-contact after leaving it all in the room, their indiscreet discretion, his attention is a flood to her senses. She thinks it cruel of him, now, that she has made a commitment to someone else – to Pete – and now that she is finally making a life for herself without him. Part of her is counting the moments until their next fleeting touch of hand and part of her is trying to manage the steady buzz, to focus on her work, to be the officer she is trained to be. She watches her words, her actions; she watches him. Watches Daniel and Teal’c as they carefully school their reactions. She berates herself hourly that this is exactly why the non-fraternisation regs were put in place. 

And all the while there’s a ring in her zip pocket and she wonders how she could ever give this up, any of it, even if it’s her last chance at having a normal life.

* * * * * * 

They have declined the offer of accommodation from the Pindarans, although Daniel says it is rude of them not to take up the hospitality when the trade treaty is in its final stages. To Sam, it feels like one of the last chances they will have as SG-1 to stay off world on a reasonably – hopefully –low-risk planet. It’s the General’s decision though and as he is so rarely off world these days, she writes it off as his ploy for a quiet off-world evening with his team.

By force of habit it’s Sam who takes the first watch, the guys sympathetic to her preference for a straight stretch of sleep. Or, more probably, keen to avoid her pre-coffee grump the next morning if she has a disturbed night. She’s surprised when the General opts for the second watch, but then nothing flows quite like it used and she’s nothing if not adaptive.

It’s something different entirely when he settles down next to her by their fire, early for his watch and offering to brew up a hot drink. 

She nods her gratitude and wonders if she’s supposed to feel so keenly his presence in the half-dark. He startles her a little with his easy _hey, Carter_ , as he offers her a cup and sits back next to her, hip to hip with their uniforms and half a dozen air force regulations in the space between their bodies. She offers a _thanks, sir_ and he takes that as an opening to talk, affably, about the treaty and the firelight and how Daniel is driving him nuts trying to parse the local dialect.

All the while, she sits and tries to persuade herself that she can’t possibly be feeling heat from his thigh next to hers, that there’s no such thing as chemistry between people and anyway it’s not chemistry, it’s physics, pure and simple, energy in waves and throughout universes, binding them together.

Then there’s a moment where he notices she’s not just companionably silent and gives her a nudge with his thigh, with a breezy joke about keeping her up past her watch. And fuck it, there is a current flowing though her now, along the length of her thigh from hip to knee where they came into contact, heat and pure energy that fizzes through her. Before she knows what she’s doing she is looking him right in the eye, from only inches away, and she’s dizzy with the sensation of being seen by him, really seen. To his credit he looks half-perplexed, but underneath that there’s more and she thinks he can’t be ignorant of his affect on her.

Before she knows what she is doing, she has her hands in his hair and her mouth pressed lightly against his, tasting his warmth and the coffee he’s just been sipping. He’s rigid with surprise and his hands are still at his sides, but he’s not pulling away and the electricity is coursing through her now, a continuous circuit which she can feel over every inch of her skin. 

Then things get hazy for a while and he’s kissing her back, his hands around her upper arms, hot, open-mouthed kisses which make her feel like the universe is at a tilt. They are silent but for occasional bursts of breath and kissing him is like nothing else, not even like Jonah and Thera, because when something is wrong in so many ways, it’s always going to feel this right.

In the moment before he tenses and pulls away she reads the twitch of his jaw and the intent there. So she’s braced when he asks, voice pitched low, _Carter, what are you – what are we –_

She leans in again, looking straight up into his dark, unreadable eyes, and supports herself with her hand on his knee. _Nothing_ , she says, _we’re doing nothing_. And because he’s been making a claim on her body for weeks with his light touches, because her body is molten beneath his fingers, because maybe he thought that she was above reproach now that she has someone safely non-military making a claim on her time, she kisses him again, intently.

She feels the effect on him and it pushes her through her uncertainty until she’s shifting into his lap and finding soft gasps torn from the back of her throat as his hands find her waist and the heat of his mouth warms her neck. Her fingers pull through his hair even as she rolls her hips, ever so slightly, and revels in the way his fingers tighten at her hips. She thinks she may have bruises in the morning.

Kissing him is like stepping through the gate, like blowing up a sun, like stolen moments working underground when you don’t know your own name. It’s like finding something you didn’t know was lost. There’s a sureness to their movements together that makes her feel more than a little desolate.

And then he’s pulling away to catch her eye like he’s having second thoughts and suddenly they’re both aware of Daniel turning in his sleep only feet away, mumbling the new vocab he’s been practicing and no doubt disturbing Teal’c. She leaps from his lap like she’s been shocked and she hasn’t the faintest idea how to read his carefully schooled expression. She backs away.

She heads for the free tent to compose herself, cursing her own carelessness and god, her infidelity – because despite whatever she feels and however long she’s been feeling it, she’s said yes to Pete and that is supposed to mean something. And the crowing glory is that they are off-world, on watch, and firmly against regulations.

She waits for her body to calm its fervor and she waits for the sleep she knows she needs. She knows that when the General’s watch is up, he’ll have to slip into the empty bedroll next to her to avoid alerting the guys that something is up. She knows, too, to expect his weighty silence, and the stillness that means he doesn’t want to give anything away.

Under alien stars, she sleeps fitfully and hopes desperately that the dawn will bring some kind of clarity. 

Beside her, the General doesn't sleep at all.


End file.
